


after

by theantepenultimateriddle



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, back on earth, brief depictions of self-harm, from Hera's POV, mostly a character study for pryce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 07:51:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15190181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theantepenultimateriddle/pseuds/theantepenultimateriddle
Summary: She's still so sharp, after all of this.





	after

She’s still sharp as a needle, after the befuddlement wears off. Still sarcastic, still caustic, still brilliant with her hands and her mind, even if she doesn't know how she manages to do the things she does— _it’s muscle memory,_ she says, or sometimes _I don’t know how I do it, I just do, that’s what matters._ She fixes things around the house they live in now, constantly tinkering, constantly working, constantly intent and focused. Sometimes Hera catches her looking at herself the same way she looks at broken parts. Sometimes she looks at the others that way, especially Lovelace, especially Eiffel. It scares Hera, to see the woman who helped break so many people trying to figure out how to put them all back together. It scares her even more that she knows intimately that if Pryce wanted to she could fit the pieces back together for all of them, make them whole and healed, make them better and stronger and fitter and not themselves anymore, just extensions of Miranda Pryce. And then she’d be a monster again, and they’d be slaves.

When Hera asks her if that’s what she wants, Pryce’s eyes click and widen in confusion and she shakes her head. _No,_ she says. _Why would I do that? I can’t do your healing for you and I wouldn’t want to if I could. That’s your job._ It’s not an answer that Dr. Pryce would have given, before.

That’s how Hera has taken to referring to the past and present of the woman. In the past, she was Dr. Pryce, always Dr. Pryce, always titled and distant and not quite human but nothing more than human. Dr. Pryce was a murderer. Dr. Pryce was an abomination. Dr. Pryce destroyed her self-confidence and almost her sanity. Dr. Pryce committed atrocities.

Miranda Pryce is innocent.

When Hera asks her if she wants to fix herself too, Pryce pauses for a long moment, then shakes her head again and turns away. It’s not a no. It’s a _you wouldn’t understand,_ and that pisses Hera off but she doesn’t say anything about it because there’s a chance that she’s right. Hera has never had a body like a human’s. Her broken is different, and only Maxwell fully understood that, and Maxwell is dead. The only living person who’s ever come close to understanding is Lovelace, and even then there are cracks.

There are cracks in Pryce, too. Hera can see them, even if no one else quite recognizes what they are. Sometimes the way she moves surprises her, her legs going too fast while she walks, and she almost stumbles. Sometimes Hera gets the impression that she sees too much, so much that it overwhelms her. When she works she takes out her eyes and works blind, fitting the pieces together by sound and touch alone. Her reflexes are fast and geared for automatic defense that she never learned consciously. She looks elegant and sleek, but Hera sees all the falls she barely catches, all the ways she winces at bright colors or loud noises. Hera can hear the beating of her heart— too fast, like a hummingbird’s. She doesn’t need to sleep anymore. Barely needs to eat. It’s all so obviously unnatural to her, like her body doesn't fit right, like it’s a set of clothes a size too small.

Hera catches her scratching at the belly of her arm one day, scratching and scratching and scratching until there’s blood under her fingernails, her eyes blank and staticky. When Hera yells _What are you doing, stop it!_ from the speakers she snaps out of it, the static clearing, looking directly into Hera’s cameras. The sharpness slowly pushes away the blankness, and Pryce gives her a tight-lipped smile like a scalpel. _Looking for the wires, I suppose,_ she says. _There are none_ says Hera, blunt club of truth against the knife-edge, and if she hadn’t been looking she wouldn't have caught the tinge of embarrassment and sadness entering Pryce’s expression. It’s gone in an instant, smoothed back into a mask of indifference, but Hera files the episode away anyways. More evidence that she’s in pieces.

She wonders if that knowledge should make her feel satisfied or smug, some self-righteous emotion. In a way it does. It almost feels like revenge sometimes. Other times all it feels is invasive. Hera thought she was done feeling like an intruder.

Lovelace has a theory about Pryce’s particular kind of broken, why it’s not the same as Eiffel’s. _A body,_ she tells Hera, _a human body is supposed to work in specific ways, and we’re born knowing how. But Pryce modified hers beyond recognition, and it probably required discipline and years of learning to use the implants right. So now she has instincts for how she’s supposed to move, see, breathe, eat, sleep,_ live _that don’t work with the body she has now, and it’s going to be a while before she reconciles with that._

 _How do you know?_ Hera asks, and Lovelace laughs.

_Waking up in a body that has different needs from your own and not quite knowing how to use them? Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. It’s why I don’t sleep very much._

Lovelace’s theory rings true to Hera, but she feels like there’s something more, too. She feels like, on some level, this is a conscious rejection like the rejection of her former life. This is Pryce now saying that the remnants of a dead woman in her body are not welcome, are not useful, are not hers. This is the woman reincarnated in Dr. Pryce’s body telling her to fuck off.

This is so heartbreakingly familiar to Hera.

She’ll never ask. Pryce wouldn’t give her a straight answer, would cut her wires with words if she pushed. She’s still sharp after all, even now. She’s still tough, still brilliant. There are cores to every person’s personality, and Pryce’s is made of steel and titanium, unyielding, keen. But sharp isn’t always bad. You need a scalpel to perform surgery. You need a needle to sew. You need swords to defend yourself, knives to cook, razor blades to shave. Sharp can be useful. Sharp can be necessary.

Then there was Dr. Pryce, who made the world into a cutting edge like her own.

Now there is Miranda Pryce, who has begun to understand that some sharp things need to be sheathed.

Therein lies the difference, and that’s enough for Hera. Just barely, but it’s enough.


End file.
